The Amazing Race
by Octarine Nova
Summary: One-shot: Rincewind's amazing running abilities are employed to help the Ankh-Morpork City Watch solve a crime. Constructive flames only please-give your reason why you don't like it.


James Minor

The Amazing Race (A Discworld Short Story)

It was a sweltering day in the alleys of Ankh-Morpork, that jewel of the Circle Sea.

Rincewind examined his hand of cards, then turned to look around the table. The dealer leered back at him from behind what appeared to be several pounds of tattooing ink permanently affixed to his body. The other players weren't much better, represented a truly cosmopolitan cross-section of Ankh-Morporkian society, from thieves, to cads, to scoundrels, to robbers, to card sharks, to any combination of the above. The total number of teeth at the table, not counting Rincewind's own, was probably on order of forty, and there were over ten people at the table.

Rincewind didn't have to be a wizard to know that the dealer was in cahoots with everyone at the table besides him, because, for the fourth time in a row, he'd been dealt the worst possible hand in Ankh-Morporkian poker: the suicide cocktail. The deck was rigged for good measure, obviously. Which was a shame, really, because he was. A wizard, that is.

"I'll see your ten, and raise you twenty," Rincewind managed to say with a straight face. Well, at least it isn't my money, he thought, as all the other players at the table immediately matched him and laid their cards on the table with expressions of glee.

That was the funny thing about this whole mess, really. Rincewind, as a general principle, never bothered with gambling at all, because he was bound to lose, and if he won the other players suddenly 'discovered' that their opponent was a wizard, and, by implying that he had been cheating using magic, took his winnings away from him. Not that it would have made a difference, because Rincewind was in fact that singularly most inept wizard on the Disc. He _had_ graduated form the Unseen University, of course, and he _could_ identify basic magical properties of various items, but he had no spell-casting ability whatsoever. To make up for this fact, Rincewind had, over the years, developed running into an art. He was a master of getting away in the most basic way: by high-tailing it out of where ever he was when the going got fatal.

Perhaps it was because of this that Commander Samuel Vimes of the City Watch had asked Rincewind for help. Apparently, the gambling den that Rincewind was currently in was a front for the largest criminal organization in the city (that wasn't obeying Lord Vetinari's rules to the letter, of course). Their business was assassination. Not the highbrow Assassination practiced by the Assassins of the Assassins Guild, who were all gentlemen, of course, but simply the dirty business of making people disappear. Unfortunately, despite blatant evidence to the contrary, they were still theoretically obeying the rules as a perfectly normal gambling organization, and so they had a right to not be searched. Samuel Vimes needed an excuse to search the building, because that was were the assassins were hiding the bodies, because anywhere else would have been found already. He obviously couldn't just search it, because even, or perhaps especially in Ankh-Morpork that would cause suspicion if not outright chaos.

Fortunately, the Watch had recently found a weakness. This organization of murderers was pushing their luck by having cards that favored the house more than 50 above what was permitted. If a set of these cards, which were carefully guarded, could be smuggled out of the building, then they would have proof of illegal activity and could search the building from top to bottom, thus finding the bodies.

This was where Rincewind came in. The idea was to let him enter the den, using the Watch's money to gamble, appearing to be a perfectly ordinary, if incredibly unsuspecting, gambler. Then, was he went to leave, he was to grab a deck of the cards that he was _sure_ was rigged and high tail it all the way back to the Watch's HQ.

Of course, normally an adventure of this risk would have been something that Rincewind would have avoided like the plague, but in this case he made an exception. Originally when Samuel Vimes made asked him to pay him handsomely he refused. However, the Commander then mentioned that one of the people who had been killed was a cousin of Sergeant Angua, the Watch's local werewolf, and that she'd been distraught ever since. Rincewind immediately volunteered to protect his throat from laceration in the near future, and for only half of the money originally proposed.

After that last hand, Rincewind had pretty much run through the money that the Watch had given him. He picked up what was left of his chips and walked up to the chip dealer, all the while keeping a _very_ close eye on where he deck of cards from that game had gone. "I'd like to cash these in," he said rather nervously, shoving the chips across the counter, while counting down in his head as the dealer from the last game walked past.

_Five._

"Here's your money," the chip dealer grunted.

_Four._

"Thank you," Rincewind said, noticing that the cash guard's skin looked almost black from all the tattoos.

_Three._

Rincewind picked up the scattered silver coins and turned as if to leave.

_Two._

Rincewind positioned himself so that he would brush by the dealer on his way out.

_One._

"Don't mind me," Rincewind murmured as he grabbed the card deck on his way out.

The dealer noticed immediately. "Grab that rat!" he bellowed, diving for Rincewind.

But Rincewind was already out the door.

His sandals clattered on the cobblestone road as he zigzagged through the maze that was the back alleys of Ankh-Morpork. Behind him, he could vaguely hear the sounds of pursuit, so, since his heart was already pounding in his ears, he ducked through a local fish market and then through a small section of the sewer system just to be safe.

By the time that he'd gotten to the Watch Headquarters, the news of the chase had obviously proceeded him, because he needed the help of Sergeant Detritus, a troll member of the Watch, to get into the building through all the town criers asking for news. If the troll hadn't been walking in front of him, Rincewind suspected that he would have gotten a news scroll up his nose in the process of getting to the building.

Once inside, he handed the deck of cards over to one of the Commander's aides and collapsed into one of the chairs, exhausted.

Fifteen minutes later, Commander Samuel Vimes himself came out, saw Rincewind still collapsed in the chair, and approached. "The Watch thanks you sincerely for your help, Rincewind," he droned seriously, "but I'm afraid you grabbed the wrong deck of cards you'll have to go back." The commander stopped and lunged for the door "Wait a minute Rincewind, I was kidding! It was a right deck!" but Rincewind was already gone.


End file.
